Rocking Horse
by WinchesterNimrod
Summary: "He should be dead." "Oh I assure you doctor," said Director Fury. "To this thing, death is simply a minor setback." [Damon gets propelled into Marvel, what fun.]
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Vampire Diaries or Avengers.

Plot bunny goes hippidy hop...

Future chapters will be much, much longer don't you worry. This is just a sneak peak as to what will come...

. Prologue - Chapter One .

"You're off your rocker. Steve, he's off his rocker!"

In the time he's been unfrozen, Steve has seen a lot in the ways of the unimaginable coming true - taking it with the stride of a half-suicidal, half bent in the head out-of-time-man (therapists be damned)— but even he couldn't argue with Tony.

Director Fury aimed look at Steve's long, guilty silence.

"I am not," he clears. "You know what it is. It's all there in the debrief file you hacked into this morning at precisely four thirty am. Eastern time."

Tony 'bah's in dismissal. Seating himself back in the chair he had dramatically leapt from. "Please, it's common knowledge I read ahead - even while attending a charity ball where everyone speaks Indonesian!"

"You speak Indonesian?" Bruce asked from the back.

"No. I have people to do it for me. I'm a _billionaire_, man."

Steve supposed that made sense in some privileged world.

"Be that as it may," Fury drawled, "what you're looking at now is indeed what you all think it is. God help me." He ends a tad bitter than Steve would have preferred him to.

A superior being knocked by reality wasn't in the least grounding for a man who's only just assimilating to it himself.

Crossing his arms, Steve exhales a tight sigh. "What are we looking at?"

Again, Fury stared. "Want me to spell it out for you, Captain?"

"Oh do. Translate," Tony leans forward. Fingernails tapping the glass table. "Like my minions."

"It's a fucking _vampire_ people," Fury spat. Patience lost he jabbed a gloved finger at the x-ray of a skull blown up on the big screen behind him.

To be precise, he pointed at the elongated canines curling down like tusks from the upper gums. Curving all the way down past the lower jaw.

Steve stared at it in full disdain. "Fuck 21st Century."

. .

Simon Baskwell was pouring beer from the bar tap, hearing another one of Billy Joel's songs come on repeat shuffle, when a rush of exhaustion drags his awareness.

"Whoa. Easy there, chum," a drunken voice warns as he wavers. Beer spilling over the sides of the glass and foam licking his shoes. "You look a bit _drained_."

"Long night," Simon huffs. Glancing up to reassure the gentleman only to hitch a breath in slackened shock - glass in his hand dropping into shards that slice and tear across his ankles. "_God_."

Irises. So blue and crystal they glistened against bloody, burst red eyes.

The man of them seemed to stifle a sneeze - snorted, then coughed into an explosive laugh. Veins trickle from the eyes to a blood smeared mouth. Simon catches two, white elongated canine teeth stained from a red, _red_ mouth.

"Oh," the creature - not man, not _human_ \- breathes, "Not quite."

Simon then notices it. The silence. All he could hear was Billy Joel.

He risks looking away from the thing to find everyone he had served, worked with, laughed with and lived near in this tiny, lively down - dead.

Necks torn and body's frayed like pieces of discarded meat from scavenging rats.

Simon doesn't fight the vertigo that slaps him. He sinks to the ground and watches in terror as the thing wearing a man's face leans over the counter to stare at him peculiarly.

"What you doing down there?"

"You," Simon's eyes shrink back to tears. "_Monster_."

"Oh," it groans, "_don't_ look at me like that. Haven't you ever been hungry before?"

He chokes on a sob. "You're going to kill me too?"

"Nope."

"Really?"

It snorts, "Of _course_ I'm going to kill you. I'm a dick."

.. .

Please review!


	2. Chapter 2

Back with a new chapter :D

Hope ya'll enjoy.

. .

Two

. .

Ten months back, in a room buried miles beneath a decaying, decrepit church build centuries before by a man in a town too wicked for its own good - harsh yellow light flooded behind a one-way mirrored wall.

A woman - confident, sly - shuddered, rocking half a step backwards at the sight she was blindfolded and dragged to remain and study for the remaining future, "He should be dead."

"Oh I assure you doctor," Director Fury stables a hand behind her. "To this thing, death is simply a minor setback."

"You know this for certain?"

The Director gave a stiff-lipped smile, "Too certain for my own liking, Doctor."

And to that the woman turned speechless, taking a wary step towards the glass. Hand pressing against its cold touch - she gazed in awe at the creature that should, by all natural means and purposes, be fictitious.

"_Oh_, Fitz would love this."

The vampire's skin was as white as bleached bone, face sculptured and behind matted, black hair, bandages covered the eyes. If it weren't for her partner back home she would have been weak in the knees and somewhat inclined to ignore the blood drying around its mouth - past its neck and to its chest. Staining the mandatory hospital gown SHIELD had dressed it in like a good little guinea pig. Looking closer, she could spot signs of a fresh massacre tinting pristine white walls.

She also noticed that the Vampire was, of all things, whistling.

"Is…that the Backstreet Boys?"

Fury turned to calmly address the agent guarding the door behind them, "Where's its goddamned muzzle, Agent Jon?

"We ran out, sir - and I'll think you find Doctor Simmons," Jon adds helpfully, "it's _Everybody_ he's whistling."

"_I say, fan of Backstreet Boys, Agent Jon?"_

_"_Partial fan, si -" Agent Jon stared through the one-way mirror where the Vampire now sat, not whistling, but rather paying particular attention to his general area. Or to be even more precise, right at him. "…O-_h_?"

The vampire grinned.

Director Fury eyed the glass as though expecting to find it had suddenly vanished.

"Amazing," Doctor Simmons said, moving even closer. "The Vampire can _hear_ us."

"_Obviously_," it drawled through the speakers. Managing to sound perfectly contemptuous of his current living situation. "_It would be a funny old world if I couldn't_."

"Bravo. Good point."

The Vampire somehow managed to portray rolling his eyes without anybody actually witnessing it.

"Doctor," Fury paused ominously between his words, "_Do_ refrain from making friendly with the creature."

"I'll get right on that, sir."

Skip to ten months when Doctor Simmons gets a bit too comfortable around starved creature - weakened, pathetic, fragile - and risks a curious peek behind the bandages.

Its brilliant blue eyes held hers.

She couldn't have looked away, couldn't have blinked, she was utterly tranquillised.

Security cameras picked up the terrible sounds of chains rattling, fists of bone cracking in head of hair - fingers tearing into flesh like a piece of delicious fruit and the raw, guttural _groans_ as blood dribbling through the vampire's muzzle and down its dry throat.

Doctor Jemma Simmons death certificate was the most gruesome one to look at, Steve decided as he sat in the Quinjet. Twenty minutes after debrief.

Wondering when exactly the world stopped making sense.

. .

After having changed into the barman's grey dress shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. baggy black pants and a pair of fairly bigger than he'd prefer sneakers - Damon was currently humming a merry little tune of his own creation while scavenging as much blood as he could get in a rudimentary plastic flask that he pops back into his top pocket.

After being cooped up in that dreadfully white room for what he'd gather to be at least almost a year and starved of blood, it makes one grateful for the simple things.

One; drinking.

He snags a bottle of bourbon off the shelf and dangles the neck of it between his fingers.

Two; driving.

Reaching into one wealthy looking woman's purse, he dug out a snazzy looking car key and shoved it into his newly acquired pant pocket. Gently brushing back the curly auburn hair of the girl lying slackened against the pool table, he gives a smile and pats her cheek in thanks.

Three; sunlight.

Damon stares mournfully at his hand.

Assholes took his ring.

Through the window's shades, Damon peeks through to spot the sun rising bit by bit in the distance. Glowing sickeningly yellow through thick, dark clouds.

"Peachy."

If there was one thing Damon didn't have, it was patience.

He also wasn't one to be a sitting duck.

With a resigned scowl and vicious yank of tattered window blinds, Damon drapes the awful bloodstained thing over himself, kicks the door down and taps the car keys.

'_Beep-boop_'

. .


	3. Chapter 3

. .

three

. .

Summer daylight was beginning to fade half an hour into the trip out of whatever region Damon had gotten stuck into (he was betting somewhere in England. America doesn't have this much green - if they did it wasn't the America he knew).

The majority of the ride was spent resembling a mummy that had unwittingly woken up in its sarcophagus, found that they didn't really like it all that much and mummifying really wasn't all it was cracked up to be and ran away.

By the forty minute mark, the temperature had dropped along with the sun.

Pulling over on the dirty backroads of whichever freeway he was hightailing it out on, Damon scurries from the car, untangles himself loudly, bunches up the curtain and shoves it into the passenger seat and starts tearing it down the road again like a lunatic. Causing severe damage to the structure of a vehicle that was not made for backroad adventures.

Headlights gleamed a dirty path he furiously hoped lead somewhere with civilisation apart from cows, horses and sheep. As so far, that's all he's seen.

The combination of bourbon and classic rock radio station shouting at him helped Damon enjoy the ride more comfortably. It being such a potent mixture, he couldn't hear his own thoughts of concern about having an X-File, secrety-secret-hush-hush behind the curtains government out for his blood in the manner a mother bear after witnessing her cub die a horrendous death.

"whoo hoo," he says and carries on careening down an undisclosed path in an undisclosed country - he was still betting on England.

Okay, maybe Scotland.

.

Ignoring his problems end in a tragic turn of events.

Or rather. It ends with a man dropping through the car's metal roof and into the passenger seat like a gift from Heaven.

"Hi there!" Damon grins, shouting over Billy Idol as though this were a common occurrence.

(after getting popped into another universe like a cork on a bottle of bubbly, everything is fairly regular in comparison)

It's an insignificant fact, but Damon has to say a grown man wearing an American Flag for a suit does little to inspire.

"Hi!" Steve greets back, finding it only polite. He too, has to shout. "You're under arrest!"

"Really?" Damon hazards. Keeping one eye on the road and the other on the spangly man. It was a neat trick. Took him half a decade to master. "Are you sure you've got the right guy?! I mean, I do my own washing!"

"How bout you pull over!"

"Eeeeeeh!" Damon checks to see if he had his seat belt on. Surprisingly, he does. "How bout you go fuck yourself, Blondie!" Damon breaks and the man's body explodes through the windscreen. The wheel punches into Damon's sternum and a rib punctures a lung. He's pretty sure he's got whiplash and a multitude of life-threatening injuries. Nothing that lasts little under ten seconds after his fresh feast. "High ho Silver!"

The arrow on the mph dash goes up like a rocket.

Billy Idol rocks on.

In the torch of headlights, Spangles picks himself up only to get nocked down again by a growling car.

Damon cackles evilly over the human speed bump. Car leaping and crashing and groaning.

"_That wasn't very nice_" Billy Idol tells him through the speaker's in a not-so-Billy-Idol voice. A ball of shiny metal shaped in a vague humanoid form lands right on the bonnet. Crouched and waving metal fingertips.

"Hi!" Damon greets again. Car shooting across the road at accelerating speed. "Friend of Blondie's?"

The man - not robot, Damon can smell and hear the man's pounding heartbeat, tainted and coppery with something metal and electric fuzzing just the tip of his tongue- raises a hand. Blue encircling the centre of the palm ignites and turns orange then yellow then fuming red.

Damon can feel the static in the air and spots just beyond, in faint headlight, a tunnel.

"I'll take that as a yes," he chuckles and just as the tunnel comes up he swipes the wheel left and slams the side of the car up against the bricked wall. Wing mirror buckles and tears away. Metalwork grins and screams fill the black tunnel with sparks and flashes.

"_Son of a bitch!_" Billy Idol curses. Illuminated by the fitful flashes of tearing car parts.

Grip on steering wheel tight Damon slams the right side of the car against the tunnel with the cheer of a toddler being handed a new toy. The man's balance drops left and he falls. Catching himself with rockets on his palms and feet.

Damon opened and shut his mouth a few times.

That was aimed at his _face_.

"What a psycho."

Breaking free of the tunnel the road suddenly decides to turn drop into a hill, and being at high speed, you can imagine what happens next.

He soars.

Into a surprising patch of forest that was recently transferred there from some other part of England by a bunch of people from the restoration society of native trees. Three months from now Damon reads it in his SHIELD file and has a sudden urge to kill the whole lot of them.

With incredible accuracy the bonnet slams in-between two tree trunks and Damon's thrown. Seat belt not able to withstand the full-fucking speed his body was travelling at - seeing as, during the safety test when this exact car model was made, nobody in the lab foresaw this exact scenario and planned for such occasion. Nobody blames them.

Shit happens.

He topples through branches, lands on one or two bird nests, gets scratched at by a startled squirrel and eventually lands on his back. Windblown and bewildered.

Some leaves and branches flutter around him and Damon's pretty certain his limbs aren't supposed to stick at such odd angles. In a groan, a curse, a growl he sets everything right again. Blood circulating, bones, arteries and membranes knit back together. He licks his bloodied lips. Blinks blood clots away and sways to his feet.

This is ridiculous.

Metal man lands in front of him like a miniature comet. Damon hears the speakers through the helmet ping on.

_"How 'bout - "_

Two strides bring him to contact, hand finds the face plate and it crumples under him like wet cardboard. The bodysuit's alarms go off and Damon is grinning in surprise at suddenly being air born with his transport flailing about. Clinging to the man's faceplate like Tarzan on a tree branch he says:

"I wonder what you taste like -"

and rips it off.

Seperate hand coming up to grip the back of his neck at the same time, he pulls up and bites the human's lower lip.

The blood Damon tastes it so vile he lets go and retches all the way to the ground.

"_You bit me!" _The man screeches.

"You need to see someone about your genetics, man," Damon advices. Gagging. "Oh the aftertaste," he spits, "Oh that's terrible. I think I swallowed one of your beard hairs."

"First you bite me and then you insult me_,_" the man lands besides him. Bleeding and looking haggard. "You're no fun."

Damon rears up for another attack only to dodge a dart to the neck. He turns, smelling her before seeing her.

"Hello there," he smirks, giving a friendly wink. "You smell equally as awful as Roadkill and Metalhead."

"What's with this guy?" Metal guy asks the woman with hair red as blood. She saunters from the mock of trees. Tranq guns raised.

"You're surrounded," she says. "Resistance is futile."

"I don't want to make a meal out of this 'coming silent' thing," says Damon. "But surrendering seriously isn't my style."

"Figured," she has a friendly smile on. "That's why I'm the, as you'd put it, 'bait'."

Damon's smirk drops. "Wha -" about a hundred darts ping from the trees in a 360 degrees circle.

He hits the earth in a pained curse. Resembling an extravagant pin-cushion.

Yes, when Damon found out who put that forest there, he truly wanted to murder them.


End file.
